DIY Pan Tilt Camera

A robot needs to see what is happening in its surroundings. You can mount a fixed camera at the front of the robot or you can make a 360 camera at the top of the machine. In this project we going to make a cheap Pan and Tilt unit to mount a camera on. If you have a camera which has a zoom function you can make a real PTZ camera out of it. In my case I used a normal camera without a zoom function.

To make a PT unit you need a piece of aluminum from 25 millimeter wide. The total length is about 90 millimeter. In the picture below you see all measurement for the bracket I used in this project. You can use these dimensions, but you can also make your own adjustments. Beware of the rotation of the actual construction in contrary to the picture below. The long side has to be vertical. Use the same dimensions for the holes at both ends.

Mount the servoӳ as shown on the picture below. I used two Hitec HS422 Servo’s but you can use any servo you like as long it is strong enough. I used small nuts and bolts (3mm) to mount the servo round plate on the bracket . You have to make 2 holes in the Servo Horn a little bit bigger to fit the nuts and bolt. I used a very slow turning drill. The plastic on the Servo Horn I used was very soft, so probably it should not break when drilling faster.

The camera I used (Azelas AZC-001) is very small and was easy to mount on the top servo. I had to remove the metal clip at the backside of the camera and simple used a cable tie and double sided tape to mount it on the servo.

The base servo is mounted on a MDF plate. Just make a square hole in it to fix the servo in.

As you can is the rotation point of my camara not in the middle of the base plate. For now it’s ok, but I have to change this some day.

The control of the servo will be explained in a other project in the future.